Thou shalt not put politics ahead of religion

By Michael Scammell

5 August 2018 — 1:39pm

Our political leaders are doing God and it’s about time.

Malcolm Turnbull, Bill Shorten and Penny Wong, among others, have been discussing their religious beliefs in a new book on faith without the usual deer-in-headlights reaction that occurs whenever a politician spots a godless and cynical journalist looking for a gotcha moment.

The heavens above Sydney.Credit:Tanya Lake

Given our ongoing collective moral panic about religion-driven collective moral panics, it’s a surprising change from the usual "nothing to see here" default. Or to borrow former British prime minister Tony Blair's eloquent phrase, Australian politicians don’t "do God".

This is good advice given what usually happens to any politician who does. In Australia the media gets very agitated about political leaders who show any signs of personal spiritual belief or the vaguest hint of god-botherer sensibility. Heart-on-sleeve Catholic Tony Abbott gets mocked as the "mad monk" and back in the good old days they hyperventilated when then-popular Kevin Rudd was spotted reading scripture rather than economic policies on a plane.

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And like all theological stuff it gets complicated with a declared absence of God apparently just as bad as belief, with Julia Gillard claiming her self-declared atheism yet another reason why she lost as prime minister. Then again this doesn’t explain why the agnostic Bob Hawke was so popular (thought he did have a Christian minister for a father). It’s confusing.

All this God-secrecy is a great disservice, as a declaration of religious belief may actually create a greater empathy and understanding for political decisions made. Until now I was unaware of Wong’s Christian beliefs, which provides an added complexity to how she reacted during the same-sex marriage debate.

Likewise, while many left-leaning media critics attack the usual conservative Christian suspects like Abbott or Kevin Andrews, they fail to recognise the broader influence of Christian belief on left-of-centre political media favourites such as Peter Garrett (whose music through to political public service are infused with evangelical belief) or ALP-icon Kim Beazley (the best Labor prime minister we never had) who grew up in a fiercely Christian family and whose notions of social justice helped drive him into a political career.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott at the Canberra Baptist Church in 2015.Credit:Brendan Esposito

And in the case of the impromptu Rudd scripture reading, shouldn’t we recognise the benefits of our national leaders exposing themselves to ideas that go beyond Canberra and the immediately partisan?

After all, there is value in a politician reading great philosophical works – or for that matter cultural and artistic masterpieces like Shakespeare or the great religious texts such as the Koran. Indeed, Paul Keating admitted a passion for composer Mahler helped him do his prime minister job properly by providing a brief metaphysical escape from Canberra’s relentless bureaucratic monotony.

It is also worth noting the key role of Christian groups in the ongoing debate over refugees and off-shore processing. Clearly there is Good God and Bad God and a trawl through the history of Labor reveals Christianity and its social justice values a great incubator for future politicians and leaders.

"Doing God" is becoming much more of a necessity and something politicians can’t continue trying to avoid. A debate over protection of religious freedoms is currently underway in Parliament and only last week our political leaders, led by the Prime Minister, felt it necessary to intervene in the case of Adelaide Archbishop Phillip Wilson demanding that he resign his position having been found guilty of concealing acts of sexual abuse.

At a more symbolic level the Greens have recently led calls to abolish the reading of the Lord's Prayer from the start of Senate sittings potentially removing a potent sign of our cultural past. Politicians hiding their religious beliefs might want to consider what might be culturally, politically and symbolically lost with such choices as they continue to do political expedience over doing God.